


Gray Matter

by Lafayette1777



Category: Arctic Monkeys, British Singers RPF, Indie Music RPF, Last Shadow Puppets
Genre: Affairs, Bar fights, Head Injury, I don't know why I love seeing Miles suffer, M/M, Mentions of homophobia, Misunderstandings, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 13:26:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4707566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lafayette1777/pseuds/Lafayette1777
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>At the end of the night, Miles supposes he can always blame it on the head injury, if need be. </em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gray Matter

**Author's Note:**

> This for a prompt sent to me by anon on tumblr, which was originally just Miles mistaking Alex and Matt for a couple, but of course I had to make it angsty because cause I am generally heartless.   
> Thanks for reading!

It starts with violence, of course.

Regardless of where the world has come from or where it’s going, there’s always a certain kind of midnight in the provinces that’s going to set things off. And the two blokes at the bar are exactly the kind of thing that pulls back the hammer. 

After the first punch is thrown, Miles jumps in just for the hell of it and gets himself shoved over a table for his trouble, landing in a heap on the floor. He retorts with a sloppy kick to the balls that sends his aggressor to his knees, and by then the fight is as good as over anyways. The instigators are tossed onto the street, and the two men at the bar who were their Waterloo begin to clean themselves up. 

Miles leaps over a broken beer bottle and side steps a smashed bar stool to approach them. Pain is radiating from where the back of his head collided with the floor, but enough bar fights in his lifetime have instilled in him an intuitive gauge for the seriousness of any injury, and the discomfort from a knot on his head in the morning is only a minor consequence in the grand scheme. 

The smaller of the blokes is smiling sardonically through a bloody nose and drawling out “smooth move, Matthew,” when Miles reaches them. The one called Matthew is wearing a Hawaiian shirt and leopard print loafers and somehow still managing to look imposing - maybe it’s something about the _mom_ tattooed on his forearm. He’s the one that had swung an arm around the smaller one and kissed him on top of the head earlier in the evening; Miles had shortly thereafter been absorbed by his drink, and hadn’t seen the actual beginning of the fight, but it’s not hard to guess how these things get started. He’s intimately familiar with the defending himself in the face of the prejudiced. 

“Thanks, mate.” Matthew nods at Miles while holding a dirty bar rag to a cut beneath his left eye. “Sorry you got involved in all that.”

“Weren’t even for a good cause,” the smaller one snorts. He’s got a bush of brown curls framing a pair of dark, deadpan eyes the size of saucers, and is wearing a jean jacket buttoned all the way up, despite the close air of the bar. Miles has to do a double take; something about the pout of his lips has a shiver running down the Scouser’s spine. 

Matthew chooses this moment to reach sideways to push a long curl out of the other man’s face and worry, with more than a dab of tenderness, over the blood still leaking out his nose. Miles can take the hint. 

Still, the next words out of his mouth are, “I’m Miles.”

“Alex,” smirks the smaller one, and then motions toward his companion. “That’s Matt.”

The bartender arrives, then, to both scold and commiserate, and Matt is charming enough to get the three of them a round of drinks on the house. He invites Miles to sit, and though the pain in his head flares at the movement, he manages to settle into a seat without ending up on the floor again. 

Alex drapes an arm casually over the back of Matt’s chair, but fixes his eyes on Miles, who quickly takes a swig from his pint to hide his blush. The fight has sobered him up uncomfortably, but now as the alcohol settles into his system it tweaks the throb in the back of his head with every swallow. He blinks a few times to get his eyes to focus. 

“So have you two…” Miles searches for a tactful version of his question, and doesn’t quite find it. “You ever been in a fight like that?”

Alex, who has acquiesced to holding a handful of drink napkins to his nose, snorts and asks, “Whadya mean? A bar fight? ‘Cause with Matt around it seems to happen every other week.”

Matt laughs. “That were not entirely my fault and you fucking know it.”

Miles chuckles weakly. He’s drained most of a pint in the last few minutes and he wasn’t as sober to begin with as he thought. He rubs at the back of his head and, though the pain isn’t alleviated, at least his fingers don’t come away stained with blood. 

“So how long’ve you two been together?” Miles rasps. 

There’s a moment of silence that Miles registers as awkward only after it’s passed. Matt and Alex exchange a look before simultaneously bursting into laughter. 

“We’re not together,” Alex giggles out. “Matt’s got a fiancé. She’s a woman.”

“Oh.” Miles’s eyebrows shoot up. “Sorry, I, er...I thought I saw you guys--and then the fight.” He’s not sure if it’s embarrassment or pain or alcohol that’s most instrumental in conspiring toward his incoherency; probably some unfortunate combination of all three. Luckily, the two men opposite him just laugh again. 

“No, no...we’ve just known each other a long time,” Matt explains easily. “Like, twenty years, you know.”

In fact, Miles _didn’t_ know; the only person he’s known for anything like twenty years is his own mother. He nods and smiles anyway, though, because it’s a nice thought, even if it’s an abstract one. 

“And the fight was because I dared Matt to chat up the big bloke’s girl,” Alex cackles. 

Miles drains the last of his pint and tries not to sway in his seat. Alex’s eyes are black in the shadow of the booth and they’ve locked onto Miles again, who’s far from oblivious to what an expression like that means. Matt, it seems, is equally aware of the tension; he pulls his phone out pointedly and says, “I texted Breana a picture of me bloodied knuckles. She says I need to get me arse home.”

“Right.” Alex stands to bestow Matt with a brisk hug and cheek kiss. He then adds, with evasive eyes and a pregnant pause, “I better be on me way, also.”

Miles tries not to look surprised at his own misunderstanding, but he doesn’t have to try for long. Alex digs around in his pockets for a moment before producing a receipt and a stub of a pencil. Miles struggles to keep his eyes open while the other man scribbles out a few blocky digits and hands them over. 

“You should phone me sometime.” Alex smiles. “I gotta get home, but...yeah.”

“Yeah,” Miles parrots, the beginnings of a grin pulling at the sides of his mouth. He starts to stand to see Alex off, but something shifts in his already tenuous inner equilibrium at the sudden movement. The world swirls uncomfortably and as pain stabs through the back of his head, he sticks out an ineffectual hand to grasp for the nearest solid object. Incidentally, that’s Alex’s forearm, but it’s too late anyways; the next thing Miles sees is a view of the peeling paint on the ceiling from where he’s landed on the hard floor tiles. 

Alex’s face invades his vision just as his eyelids start to flutter - Miles makes hazy note of the fact that Alex’s eyes are now, in fact, a shade of umber, rather than the pure black of before. 

Then, there’s nothing. 

m m m

When he comes to, it’s to the sound of a murmuring Sheffield accent. 

It’s unrecognizable, at first, and what adds to his confusion is that the conversation seems to be one-sided. He hears the rumble of the voice, sounding distinctly exasperated, and then silence where a reply should be. 

Knowledge of the physical asserts itself first - he becomes aware of a dull ache behind his eyes and something that twinges slightly when he flexes his left arm against well worn microfiber sheets. He’s horizontal, but still fully clothed; not at home, then. Slowly, there trickles in the sound of machinery, of far off footsteps and unfamiliar voices. By the time he cracks his lids, he’s got a fairly good grip on where he likely his. 

The half dark room comes into focus, and then Alex, sitting somewhat awkwardly in the chair to his left. He sheepishly ends the call on his mobile when Miles looks at him with a mix of gratitude and confusion. 

“Hey.” He smiles weakly. “Feeling any better?”

Miles frowns down at what he recognizes as an IV in the crook of his elbow and asks, “What’s wrong with me?”

Alex shrugs. “Summat to do with dehydration and a concussion. And drunkenness, I suspect. I didn’t really understand all that they were going on about, but you’re gonna be okay.”

“Well, that’s good, I guess.”

Alex gives a quick, dry laugh at that. “I guess.”

Miles begins to fight his way toward a more vertical position, despite his protesting headache. “You can go home, you know. Sorry to keep you.” It’s just now occurred to him to be embarrassed about the whole mess - his own miscalculation and subsequent collapse, and in front of someone with potential, too. He scowls down at his disheveled outfit and runs a hand through significantly mussed hair, greased with beer and sweat. 

“Nah, it’s my pleasure,” Alex replies quickly, then seems to regret his words. “I mean, it’s alright.”

His mobile begins to vibrate again and Miles catches the look of dread he sends it. Alex doesn’t pick up, and when he notices Miles’s eyes on him he murmurs a self-conscious, “It’s me girlfriend. Didn’t like me hanging up on her, I suspect.”

There’s only one word Miles hears in the whole sentence and he tosses it back with one eyebrow raised. “Girlfriend?”

Alex looks at the floor and sucks in a breath. He seems to lose his nerve, though, and instead of explaining he just crosses his legs and tucks a curl behind one ear. Miles, who doesn’t want to corner the man when he’s shown himself kind enough not to leave a stranger in the nightscape of an unfamiliar hospital on his own, fills the silence humanely. “Do you think they’ll let me out to smoke?”

Alex looks up in gratitude. He cracks a smile. “They will if we don’t tell anyone.”

Miles has no stomach for needles, so Alex comes around the bed to pull out the IV for him. The tips of his fingers are calloused, and they linger over the soft pulse in the delicate skin of Miles’s arm joint. They make eye contact, briefly, only to have Alex pull back his hand abruptly and turn on his heel to lead the way out. 

In the fluorescently white hallways, Miles manages to look healthy enough to pass a multitude of healthcare professionals unnoticed. He glances back at Alex and they share the kind of conspiratorial smile that only appears on nights like these, when everything seems a tad too strange and a tad too foreign to be completely real. 

Outside, it’s a warm night, enunciated periodically by the first hint of an autumn breeze. Alex huddles in his denim jacket while he huffs out his first lungful of smoke. It’s only after he’s lit up that Miles begins to feel the fatigue in his bones; he aches to be home in his bed, sleeping off the pounding in his skull and the mortification of the evening. But there’s still Alex, and his number burning a hole in Miles’s breast pocket as they stand in a silence that gradually grows louder and louder. 

“Look, it’s complicated, yeah?” Alex breathes, finally. He looks off into the middle distance as he speaks - an open field beyond which the lights of the city erupt. 

“Sounds like it.”

“I didn’t intend any disrespect to you, or anything,” Alex concedes. “It didn’t have to mean anything.”

“You offered me an affair. Generally speaking, the ‘means’ something,” Miles retorts. He doesn’t have the energy to be offended, and even if he did, he’s not even sure he really would be. It was probably only going to be a one-night stand, anyways, he reasons. No need to tie himself in knots over it. He sighs. “I dunno. Never mind.”

“I’m sorry.”

“S’alright.” He motions toward the hospital behind them. “Thanks for staying with me and all. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted to,” Alex insists. “I like you.”

Miles snorts. “You hardly know me, mate.”

Alex just shrugs, but Miles can see he wants to disagree. And it makes some sense, too - they aren’t quite strangers anymore. There’s something kindred between them. Without knowing barely anything about Alex beyond their shared experiences over the last few hours, he’s got an incontrovertible opinion that they probably have a lot to talk about. 

Alex is getting close to the end of his cigarette, and after he’s stomped it out beneath the heel of his black boot he turns back toward Miles. “Keep me number, will you?”

Miles already knows he will. 

Alex steps forward and slips his hand into Miles’s, lifting his chin slightly before briskly kissing the edge of Miles’s mouth. It’s quick, but warm and gentle, and Alex smells like whiskey with a noticeable base layer of Dove body soap beneath. The scent still envelopes Miles even after Alex pulls away, and he blames this for his next action.

On instinct, he finds himself reaching out toward Alex’s exposed jaw and cupping it just firmly enough to bring their lips together in earnest. Alex kisses back immediately, and with vigor, and they slowly begin to catalogue each other’s mouths. Miles’s hand tangles in Alex’s curls, pulling their chests flush together. A rhythm develops; it occurs to Miles, rather jarringly, that he could go on like this indefinitely, Alex’s scent clouding his brain, his lithe body held close. 

Until the sound of Alex’s vibrating phone breaks the spell. 

Alex pulls away reluctantly and sucks in a breath. Limbs still halfway entangled, he looks up at Miles apologetically. “I have to--”

“I figured.”

Alex pecks him once more, before unwrapping himself from Miles and heading out into the darkness of the early morning. Miles watches him go. If the other man is concerned by the fact he may have just made one of the worst kind of mistakes, he doesn’t show it. 

Miles lets the cigarette fall from between his fingers, slipping back inside before the night swallows him too.


End file.
